Notices by Lauren Weinstein (lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org), page 5

So the overall impressions that I keep hearing from the VP debate are:

Walz: Ordinary decent guy.

Vance: Stereotypical used car salesman.

Seems about right.

BREAKING: DOJ unseals previously unseen evidence in Trump Jan 6 case.

Bizarrely, the Supreme Court, by setting in motion the sequence of events that has led to this public release of evidence against Trump in the Jan. 6 case, may have done democracy an enormous favor, even though that was unlikely to have been the intention of the conservatives on the court who pushed through the immunity decision.

I'm definitely in favor of there being a third party for anti-MAGA conservatives. I like the math.

@dangillmor For the record, I like the feel of that little remote.

JD Vance blamed car seats for lower number of babies

https://www.yahoo.com/news/jd-vances-past-remarks-car-200346151.html

The nightmarish generative AI mess now steamrolling at us never ceases to remind me of Gordon R. Dickson's classic 1965 short story, "Computers Don't Argue". Only on a vastly larger scale. Seriously.

Modern music needs more bongos. And cowbells.

In the early days of ARPANET email (back when we called it e-mail) there was no standard (yet) for how to deal with the '@' when displaying messages. Local sites might configure their MUAs (Message User Agents) to display as "Foo@Bar" (remember, no domains yet!) or as "Foo at Bar". On our ARPANET site #1 PDP-11/45 V6 UNIX at UCLA, very early on it was the latter, but I migrated it to the former (as we display it today) when I took over maintenance of the MUA/MTA (Message Transfer Agent) at the site.

There were also battles at the time regarding maximum message lengths to be permitted in email (that is, "e-mail"). Was 5K bytes enough? I called for much more. And at the time, mail was queued for up to half an hour before being sent (keep in mind the ARPANET backbone speed was effectively only 56 Kb/s. That's K, boys and girls!). I lobbied for much shorter delays, and eventually pushed it up to immediate delivery when possible.

I also argued with facilities to get better quality serial cables between the systems and the terminal rooms so I could bump the terminals up to 9600 bps or maybe even 19200. There was resistance to my request. I was told that I was being silly, because "nobody could even read at 1200 bps"). Uh, I eventually won that argument.

One of the interesting differences between NYC and here in L.A. is that in NYC, the mayor has enormous power, but here in L.A., the mayor has very little power (instead, it's mainly vested in the city council). This kind of stuff matters.

Trump tells rally people criticizing the Supreme Court should be sent to prison

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-supreme-court-jail-rally-b2618050.html

I do not object to "federation" of #Mastodon to other social platforms, so long as the connections are TWO-WAY and aren't just (in theory or practice) mainly a mechanism to firehose posts from giant platforms without giving replies from Mastodon equal footing with native replies on those platforms.

This must also include the ability for users on those other platforms to subscribe/follow users on Mastodon (and for Mastodon users to follow users on those platforms), and provide equivalent mechanisms for abuse control including blocking, etc.

Otherwise, it's a trap.

***** Major YouTube price increases, and predictions about Google's future *****

A bunch of non-U.S. countries are now seeing major increases in the costs of #YouTube Premium individual and family plans. You'll recall the U.S. had similar increases relatively recently.

Prediction: #Google will start charging everyone for Gmail, Google Voice, and other basic Google services (perhaps even versions of Search), or force users to accept decreases in service quality (e.g., massive increases in ads) to avoid paying those fees (or to pay lower fees). These are services where many millions of users would find moving to alternatives extremely disruptive, and Sundar could likely pull the switch at any time.

Ultimately, it's clear that Google just wants to be as close to 100% AI as possible, with as few employees or bothersome "low value" users as possible, while still growing the profit funnel to the C-suite.

Newsom signs dangerous Calif. legislation (sure to be litigated) that requires Internet sites to verify all users' ages, likely through government credentials. Terrible.

Terrible privacy and security risks. Supposed to help the children. In fact, it will hurt everyone, including children.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/us/newsom-children-social-media-bill.html

BREAKING: Harris accepts CNN offer for another debate with Trump late in October. Trump campaign responds saying there will be no more debates between Trump and Harris.

[Wrecking everything] #Google announces deep integration of AI into #YouTube, to help flood you with vastly more garbage videos generated at the click of a mouse to try accumulate views. What fun.

So what's happening here is that Google clearly wants to take as much human creativity out of YouTube as possible. And why not? A billion AI crap videos can run ads just as effectively as a far smaller number of truly creative videos worked on by caring humans.

Google seems hell bent on wrecking everything they have that is nice. And much of what the rest of us have that is nice. -L

Current reports I've seen on the man suspected of an assassination attempt against Trump today. For whatever they're worth. Keep in mind this is very early and all information is subject to change.

58 years old
Social media posts are critical of Trump and Biden
Twitter post asked to buy a rocket from Musk to attack Putin
Encouraged Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley not to give up their presidential runs
Supporter of Ukraine and Taiwan, wanted to fight in Ukraine

and so on.

Films up to about 1927 were silent. Starting 1927 (with the release of "The Jazz Singer") larger and larger percentages had sound. From 1927 until about 1934 is the so-called pre-code era that ended with broad enforcement of the motion picture (censorship) code. During this interval a remarkable range of relatively explicit sexually-oriented and horror films were released, some of which are considered classics, and some that are startling even by today's standards.

Dear #Google: I'd smash my keyboard to tiny little fragments before I'd let your AI write anything for me. Give me a way to turn this garbage completely off, before the government forces the issue. Because the way things are going, that's in the cards.

Notably, though given multiple opportunities, Trump refused to say that he wanted our ally Ukraine to win its war against Russia. Pretty much all you need to know.